Today's the last day, so they put some of the best games back on daily! My biggest surprise this summer has been Tomb Raider. I know it was reviewed fairly well, but I've never played any of the Tomb Raider games. It's got a great blend of action, platforming, and exploration. Many reviews have compared it to Uncharted, but I never finished Uncharted because the gunplay sucked, and I blasted through Tomb Raider. So what I'm saying is Tomb Raider is better than Uncharted.

But there are a ton of great games on sale today. I've got a lot of love for Bioshock Infinite, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Civ 5, and The Walking Dead. And you've got less than eight hours to get in on Fallout: New Vegas for $5!

I sold two extra Football Manager cards, used the money to buy the two I needed one of which was Bioshock, crafted my level two badge, and my reward was...a Bioshock card.

This shiitake is awful.

Anyway, my last day purchases were Lucius, McPixel, Hoard, Lara Croft GOL and all of the DLC (it was multiplayer), and the Daedalic Bundle which has Deponia and some other adventure games. I want to get Dead Island Riptide, but I know that's just going to end in me vomiting.

_________________"The Tree is His Penis"

The tree is his penis // it's very exciting // when held up to his mouth // the lights are all lighting // his eyes start a-bulging // in unbridled glee // the tree is his penis // its beauty, effulgent -amandabear

This card thing is fustrating. But the new killing floor summer pack looks good if anyone is interested in playing hit me up. I'm back home till Wed morning than back to NB for an undisclosed amount of time.

So as some of you know I have moved and I will be back on to play when I have WiFi set up here.

_________________"...anarchists only want to burn cars and punch cops."- nickvicious"We'll be eating our own words 30 years from now when we're demanding our legislators outlaw aerosol-based cyber dildo-wielding death holograms."- Brian

FYI if you have any summer Steam sale trading cards, you might want to sit on them! There's no way to get them now except through the market or trading, and they're only going to go up in value for anyone who still wants to craft the badge. Check the market, they've all at least doubled in value since yesterday.

You collect cards through drops (you can get half of a set by playing the game, or idling), trading them with people you know, or buying them from the market. If you complete a set, one of each card, you can craft the badge, which will get you the badge (obvs), and usually a background, and usually an emoticon, and sometimes a coupon. Backgrounds can be used on your profile, emoticons can be used in Steam chat, and both can be sold on the market.

Crafting badges also get you experience points. Badges can be crafted up to five times, each crafting granting 100xp per badge level. Experience points go towards your Steam level. Steam level dictates things like how many showcases you have on your profile, how many friends you can have (I think), and how often you get booster packs. Booster packs contain three random cards from one game. You get booster packs randomly (IE, you don't have to be in game to get one) and their drop rate is determined by how many badges are being crafted, and your Steam level.

Here's some anecdotal stuff and examples. I crafted the summer sale badge five times, which means I completed the summer sale set five times. I got at least half of my cards by buying them from the market. The rest were through drops (money spent, and voting on community sales). As far as I know, there are no more ways to get summer sale cards outside of the market or trading for them. They're no longer dropping.

I've also maxed out my drops on a handful games of varying popularity. I've gotten two booster packs. One was for Trine 2, and the other for Strike Suit Infinity. Neither of those are what I would consider popular. I crafted both of those badges. I can't determine whether more boosters drop as badges are crafted, or less boosters drop as badges are crafted.

I sold my Trine 2 foil for $1. Any card I sold was so I could buy a card I needed for the Summer Sale badge and not actually spend money. I crafted it twice and I had to trade for quite a few of them because the cards I was getting were really unbalanced - I got a total of five Football Manager cards.

I'm never going to make another badge unless I buy cards because most of my card games are ones that no one I know plays. I gave Brian and BAD quite a few of my cards in games that we shared as a trade for the Summer Sale cards.

_________________"The Tree is His Penis"

The tree is his penis // it's very exciting // when held up to his mouth // the lights are all lighting // his eyes start a-bulging // in unbridled glee // the tree is his penis // its beauty, effulgent -amandabear

FYI if you have any summer Steam sale trading cards, you might want to sit on them! There's no way to get them now except through the market or trading, and they're only going to go up in value for anyone who still wants to craft the badge. Check the market, they've all at least doubled in value since yesterday.

Except you still get them whenever you craft a badge? Or at least I've gotten them for my last few badges.

Foil cards can also only be used to craft foil badges. Which it turns out can only be crafted once (i.e. they don't level like normal badges). In my experience (2 foil crafts) everything is the same as a usual badge, except will cost you way more $/time/trading to get. You still only get 100xp, usually a common backgrounds and emote. Nothing on my backgrounds/emotes specifies that they are from a foil craft.

eta: unless you have part of a foil set, I'd say sell your foil cards or horde them until the economy on foils bottoms out and you can craft a foil badge. Their only purpose seems to be allowing you to craft an additional badge for a game you own. For example I now have 6 l4d2 badges regular badges lvl 1-5 and a foil badge. Where if I hadn't gotten foil cards (or bought them) I would be unable to craft any other badges provided I had maxed out all my other games.

I'm having fun with Tropico 4 anyway. I'm happy they have kept gameplay mostly the same. I'm so bad at budgeting; I'm always in the red. I bounce up and down from a few hundred thousand either direction. Maybe Detroit is hiring.

_________________"This is the creepiest post ever if you don't know who Molly is." -Fee"a vegan death match sounds like something where we all end up hugging." -LisaPunk

Hey! If you're an enormous sucker (like me) and you bought Aliens: Colonial Marines, there's new campaign DLC! I guess it's supposed to fill in some of the enormous holes left in the main campaign's story. It's free if you were an even bigger sucker (like me) and bought the season pass! It's also the last piece of DLC for this game, so don't expect anything else to ever get fixed, like how it always tries to launch again after you've quit out.

I'm getting seriously annoyed with Steam. I like the platform and would have said they are my first purchasing choice, but now I'm trying to decide where to get the new Civ V expansion. I have Civ V gold on Steam and on dvd. My new ND game is only $3, so boohoo, but the others that don't load were full price (they worked on Windows though).

It has been well over 2 weeks now since my support ticket (over a week since I updated it. If they are experiencing a super high volume, all they have to do is tell people.

_________________"This is the creepiest post ever if you don't know who Molly is." -Fee"a vegan death match sounds like something where we all end up hugging." -LisaPunk

I tried playing Deadlight tonight and it was kind of eh. I hope it gets more exciting.

_________________"...anarchists only want to burn cars and punch cops."- nickvicious"We'll be eating our own words 30 years from now when we're demanding our legislators outlaw aerosol-based cyber dildo-wielding death holograms."- Brian